


Bury my heart underneath these trees

by Paradise_Seeker



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst, Gen, King Castiel, POV Second Person, Young Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3790423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_Seeker/pseuds/Paradise_Seeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are eleven and you wish you could just toss the crown and never look back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bury my heart underneath these trees

You are six, when they take you away from your home.

They are big, hulking soldiers. Their flamboyant vibrant blue robes swashing in the wind, following their brusque movements. You don't understand at first what they want from you, their shouted orders don't make sense. You're playing in the garden with other children from the neighbourhood when they come. They are five, swords at their hips and gleaming mail on their chests. A horse whinnies, not too far behind them. You watch them with fear in your eyes and fear in your heart when one of them, one with a plume over his helmet seizes your wrist and drags you towards a carriage you hadn't seen before. Your knees drag into the dirt, and your scrap your knuckles against the cold metal of his gauntlet when you cry because his grip hurts you too much. There are cries, shouts and slurs, your nursemaid is crying, begging, and you see another child run towards the guard who lifts you over his shoulder, as if you were barely more than a bag of flour. There are tears on your cheeks and there is the taste of salt on your lips. You call your nanny, your sister, your mother, but the other guards keep them off you and the one who's grabbed you kicks the other child off him, sending him sprawling into the dirt.

You are six when they take you away from your home and your life.

 

xXx

 

You hate the palace.

The old king dotes on you and gives you sweets, speaks with you about things you don't understand, shows you maps and tells you names you can't remember. His breath is foul, sick, and you don't like spending time with him. But he's your grandfather, and you're his heir and you have to sit with him, on the little throne made for you on his right, that little throne that is too hard for you to sit on. Even after a servant brings pillows after seeing you suffer and fidget in it, it's still very uncomfortable. You have to sit there for hours, listening to people parading and complaining before your grandfather. You don't understand why you have to be there. But when you complain, people whisper that it's your duty and _don't tell the king_. So you keep your mouth shut and bear it, keep sitting on knees that are too weak, listening to a voice that falters or even cuts off when the old king falls asleep on you. You bear the clothes – too rich, too light – that you are forced to wear, the chambers that are too big and empty. You cry yourself to sleep at night, without the reassuring presence of your sister by your side or the stories of your nan in your ear.

You have servants and guards who never speak to you, people washing you, people dressing you up, people testing your food before you can eat, people who tell you how to speak and how to stand and how to sit and how to eat.

You walk down corridors that are too big and full of silence and statues instead of laughs and shuffling feet. You are faced with stern expressions and eyes void of warmth instead of toothy smiles and kind crow's feet. You watch the beautiful palace gardens being tended to by servants behind windows while you are dying inside a sterile place and suffocating slowly and silently.

You hate the palace.

 

xXx

 

You are ten when the king dies.

The bells ring mournfully in the whole city, shaking the palace to its very core, and everyone is dressed in black and keeps their head down and speaks in whispers.

The king is dead and it seems that the whole city must die with him too.

You watch your grandfather as he is being slowly put underneath the earth and you throw a rose on his body. It is washed and dressed finely and pale and you barely recognise your grandfather in those features, because they are the _king's_. You see the big crest, with the wings and the cross on his chest, vibrant blue and gold, and you hate it with a passion that you don't understand. You remember your grandfather, this old man you came to like, not love, but like, who always sneered at the big obnoxious cross emblazoned on everything he owns, be it clothes or dishware, and you remember how he said one day, he would change it, this big fat old cross, to replace it with the tree he loved so much and in which he took so much pride on. _Remember the oak tree, little Castiel_ , he would always say. _Remember the oak tree and how strong it stands, how majestic it is. Take care of your oak tree, my son, take care of it._

Lightening strikes the tree the very next day after your grandfather's death. Everyone is afraid and already, many are murmuring it is a bad omen, that the royal oak dying with the king is just another sign that the country will die.

You are ten when you become king.

 

xXx

 

You are eleven and the crown sits heavy on your brow. It's your birthday and there are celebrations all around the city and the country. There are tourneys that last for two weeks and buffets that could feed an entire town. There are wild animals parading in front of you, with gilded collars and jewelled muzzles. There are hundreds of young and pretty princesses asking you to dance with them, even when they are too tall or too small for you. There are fireworks illuminating the sky and there is a statue with your name in the garden. You don't recognise your face in the granite high cheekbones, straight nose and hard eyes. It looks far older than you are. There are thousands of people around you and yet you feel utterly alone.

You miss your sister's hugs and your mother's kisses. You miss the simple rough-and-tumble with the other kids of your age. Your miss the just-out-of-the-oven warm pies and the freshness of the apples you just took from the trees. You miss the little pond you liked to swim in in the hot summer and you miss the barking laugh of your friends. You would trade gold and crown for just one minute in that little shabby house again. For just a glimpse of a sincere smile.

Here, you are sheltered. Here, you never speak to anybody. There is fire and greed and envy in your uncles' and cousins' eyes. Your father is proud while he sits on the throne next to you, on your right, your little throne now forgotten, destroyed, burned. You sit in your grandfather's chair, and you feel so small in it, and you can't even bring pillows to make it more comfortable. You listen to people you never hear and sign papers you never read. Your father says he will take care of it. You hadn't seen your father in years, before the old king chose you as heir. You couldn't even tell he was your father before he took you from that carriage and placed you in the bedroom that would become your tomb while alive. He says that he loves you and that he is proud the old king chose you as heir, that you bring honour to your family. You don't even know what honour means.

You are eleven and you wish you could just toss the crown and never look back.

 

xXx

 

You are thirteen when your cousin shouts that you are no king, that the country loathes you and that people are dying of famine and that the whole nation blames it on you. His words shake you to the core and you cry for the first time in years, limbs trembling and heart beating in your chest. Servants crowd over you and guards come to take your cousin away. You never see Uriel again after that. His words never leave your memory.

Your country is dying. You reign but do not rule. You have never set foot outside the palace and what you know, you only know because someone told you. You never see the finance reports or your ministers. Your father deals with them all.

You are out in the streets for three days before your guards take you again. You are cold and sore and scared but you are free. For just a few days, you are free. You eat black bread and drink water instead of pheasant and wine. You listen to street theatre instead of the royal orchestra. You dress in rough cotton pants and shirts instead of silk robes and buckskin shoes. You laugh for the first time in years with tavern girls and street boys. You sleep under a tree and make friends with a few cats. You are a young boy again, not a king, and it seems you breathe again for the first time in years.

You are in a tavern when the guards come take you, threatening to execute anyone who would harm the king. The friendly stares of just a few minutes ago become distrustful, some even hateful and you sink under their gaze. You try and search for the warmth that kept you hopeful and happy for the first time in aeons, you try to cling to hands that flinch away from you and you heart breaks. You beg, your voice broken and pleading and you are so young, a child still in your heart and you just wish someone would love you, someone would treat you as who you are, not as what you are. A green-eyed boy falters and breaks rank and tries to reach out for you, maybe even help you, but the guards roughly push him away. No one touches the king, they say. You are God's chosen, they say. And you barely have time to turn your head before one man throws a piece of stale bread at you, spitting _death to the king_. And suddenly, like a swarm of angry flies, the whole tavern erupts in indignant cries and reclamations. _Why are we so hungry? Why do you raise such hefty taxes? Why do you send men to fight a useless war? Why do you keep harassing the poor?_ Vegetables and drinks are thrown at you and you only escape intact thanks to your guards. You return, dirty and sullied in your carriage, the same one that took you from your home to the palace. You close your eyes and try to pretend those three days never existed.

You are thirteen when the revolt breaks out and you are king no more.

 

xXx

 

You are fifteen when they kill your father and put his head on a pike, a trophy in front of the palace. His eyes bulge grotesquely out of his head, his cheeks half-eaten by carrions and you barely recognise him anymore. You wonder what will happen to you now. When they will come to cut your head too. You have lived for two years in terror, hidden away from place to place, a lord's castle after another. The list of your loyalists shortens everyday and you will soon run out of places to hide. You do not dare think of your home, your true home, not the palace you were dying in for years. You haven't seen your mother for almost ten years and you barely remember what she looks like. You don't know why they keep moving you, keep protecting you. They say reason will come back soon to the people, that you will once again be king, that God is with you.

But you have never met God and you never wanted to be king. Others chose you, you don't even know why, and people hate you for it. You never wanted this.

You are fifteen when they come in the castle and execute your last protector.

 

xXx

 

Your steps echo dully against the stone, shiny with rain. There is no one here to reprimand you or forbid you to trespass. No guard to push you away or scream at you. No one to cower and hide from. There is no one here. No one but ghosts, lost hopes and you.

The old palace is now a ruin. It has been sacked and plundered for years, wrecked and trashed just after the fall of the dynasty. Stones litter the place where beautiful columns once proudly stood. The once perfect gardens are now a jungle of weeds and vines. There is no fish in the ponds, no fountains shaped like golden horses or sirens spurting water. No wandering couples stealing kisses under the night sky. Even the crickets have deserted the place.

The statue is still there, though. It has lost his arms and half of its face, but it's still there. And you can't help but think, the sculptor didn't do the king justice. You remember a little boy with wide blue eyes, innocent and expressive. You remember a shy smile and a quiet laugh. You remember hands that cling to their mother's dress, hands buried in the dirt.

You remember the sadness and the solitude. You remember the silence and the dead voice. You remember the child fading, the face hardening in adulthood. You remember the longing looks to an oak tree, to a garden he could never tend to. You remember delicate fingers and plush lips and thinking, _if only he never left home._

You hand touches the face it could never reach behind those windows and those walls. The statue isn't as beautiful as the king was, but it's still the only thing you could keep from him.

Portraits of the young king were burned, his statues, toppled, his name, cursed. Denied a proper burial and thrown into a hole like a criminal, like an animal. It's been ten years since the establishment of the Republic, ten years since the king was deposed. The people cried for justice and food, and yet they are even poorer, hungrier than in the days of the kingdom. No one dares speak against the Republic. This new Republic that is even crueller than the most tyrannical empire. The kingdom is erased from the books, from the memories and no one wishes to remember that once, there was a king, just a boy, who never wanted a crown, and who never wanted anyone to suffer with him.

You touch the granite, and the rain that falls on you gives the illusion of tears into the eye of stone. The king cries, even after he died.

You sigh softly and reluctantly detach yourself from the statue. You walk towards the tree, the royal oak dead and forgotten, like the kings it represented once. You bury your hands in its soil, dig until your nails and fingers hurt, dig until you feel it's deep enough. Your trousers are soaked, dirty, and your dark blonde hair sticks to your forehead, gets into your eyes but you keep digging anyway. Your fingers touch the roots of the tree, that once superb oak tree, killed by lightening, and you stop there. Its roots are entangled with another tree's, a small maple tree that just grew out here in the last few years, away from everyone's eyes. From your pocket, you extricate a single black feather. It hasn't lost its lustre, despite the years and strangely enough, it doesn't have one speck of dirt on it or even a broken barb. Its touch is still silken smooth, just like the day the king – then just a boy, just _Cas_ – gave it to you.

You remember with fondness and sadness the way the little boy had smiled at his discovery, how he had found this feather on his windowsill, one day. How he said it was a special treasure a bird gave to him. How, later, the little child's tale was taken as a sign from God, then the Devil from the superstitious household.

Nobody knows that Cas gave you the feather just the day before he was taken to the palace. Nobody knows that he whispered to you that he dreamt of being a bird so he would be able to roam free in the skies. Nobody knows, except you.

And as you lay the single black feather between the tree's roots, you pray that, that way, maybe he can live through the tree and fly too.

 

xXx

 

A few weeks later, the maple tree's samaras take flight in the wind and new leaves spring to life at the end of the oak tree branches.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is freely inspired by _The Last Emperor_ and some of China's history, added with a few European themes. There is no defined historical period, region or regime. I don't know how to actually tag this so I'm sorry if the tags confuse you.
> 
> Title comes from Delta Rae's song _I Will Never Die_.
> 
> English is not my mother tongue, feel free to point out any mistake you see.


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